This invention relates to an electronic device suitable for analyzing human behavior and group formation in an organization, and a system using it.
Presently, a sensor node attachable to persons is being developed as a sensor node having a radio communication function available in a sensor net (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-288619). To bring such a sensor net into wide practical use, it is important that a sensor node including radio communication functions, sensors, and power supply such as a battery must be maintenance-free and keep transmitting sense data for a long time, and be compact in size. Therefore, though the development of very-small sensor nodes and portable nodes that can be mounted anywhere is in progress, in present situations, it is said that they must be usable without battery replacement for about one year in terms of maintenance costs and usability.
On the other hand, examples of devices that handle human voice include a video conference transmitting device and receiving device, and a voice receiving device (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-339036). These devices note that a voice signal has a significant part to which pronunciation and generated voice of actual human speech are inputted, and a noise part that contains meaningless sounds such as natural and mechanical noises, and compress only the significant part to transmit the voice signal.